Madonna's Priest Feels Backlash

Hate mail comes to the priest who will be performing Madonna's wedding.

DORNOCH, Scotland, Dec. 21 (AFP) -- Susan Brown, the pint-sized pastor who will marry Madonna and her British film director fiancee Guy Ritchie here on Friday, has admitted being the victim of religious bigotry.

She has received a pile of hate mail from extremist factions in the highly conservative Church of Scotland, who do not feel she should have had anything to do with the media-hyped marriage.

But she dismissed earlier suggestions that the tenor of the letters was due to her marrying a Catholic divorcee and christening a child born out of wedlock in the church.

She admitted to the Scotsman newspaper that she had received abusive mail, but said it was mostly directed at her personally.

"There has been a reaction. There are lot of people who are still against women in the Church, fundamentalists who have the view that women should be silent in church," she said.

"No, it has nothing to do with the fact that a Catholic is getting married in Dornoch by me. That is completely the wrong line," she added.